"It is not what you look at that matters, it is what you see." That is a quote by Henry David Thoreau. I really don't know what to think of Thoreau. In some ways he was a gigantic phony, and in others, he made some good points. The quote above is one of his better points.
It really doesn't matter what you look at, it's what you see while you are looking. Two people can look at the same scene and see two opposite things. As I drive to karate, I can see Mt. Monadnock out in front of me while I also see the road in front of me. I choose to see the beauty in the mountain. The clouds passing over it, the sun glinting off its rocks. Someone else in the car, might see the mountain in the distance, but notice the dead squirrel lying at the side of the road, or the garbage that some slob carelessly threw out his window. At that moment, I might say "Isn't it beautiful!" (meaning the mountain view), while the person next to me looks at me as if I have lost my mind. Neither of us is wrong. We both have looked out the windshield in front of us, and we have both seen different things. It is not what we looked at...it is what we focused on. Over the past couple of years, I have tried to focus my sites on beauty, The natural beauty of the area I live in is breathtaking. That doesn't mean that I am blind to the problems of the world. It just means that at this point in my life, I would rather see the good than the bad. I am happy in my little piece of New Hampshire. At this point in my life, I will let others worry about the world. I will just try to improve the little part of my world where I can actually make a difference. I realize there are foreign wars in foreign lands. I also realize that some of the people in my country feel the need to go fight in these wars. They are not for me. I do not want my daughters to go fight in a foreign land... although I do want them to know how to fight. In case they ever have to protect themselves or their loved ones and property. There is an old poem from the 1930's that started with "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" Everyone likes to throw that line out as if it would mean the end of war. Obviously, they never read the poem. The poem actually says that if you don't fight for your side, then you are actually helping the other side. I think the whole poem is rubbish. Right in the first line, the author, Bertolt Brecht, says what if "THEY" gave a war. That is the problem right there. Most people have no clue as to who they are fighting for. Most just look and say, well if my country is fighting the war, then I am fighting for my country, But are they really? Who decided that our country should go to war? What influenced them? Who influenced them? I think those are very important questions. Particularly since Congress has not declared a war since World War II. How do you see the world? Do you want peace or war? Have we really denigrated that far? Have we really reached the point where war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength? George Orwell must be rolling in his grave!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
September 2021
Categories
All
|